Hannah Givens and her fellow coaches needed to be especially mindful as they maneuvered around their office at University of Lynchburg last year. A wrong step might end up in a mess strewn across the carpet.
Between their trips up to Turner Gymnasium for practices and games with their indoor volleyball team, Givens and assistants Ryan Turner and Treslyn Ortiz stepped gingerly until they could examine the contents of the containers they were careful not to knock over, the pails filled with different types of sand.
“We were part of all of it. … We had buckets of sand in our office for a good three months, trying to find a good consistency and things like that,” Givens, UL’s director of volleyball, said of a process that started in earnest last fall to add beach volleyball to the school’s NCAA athletic offerings.
Less than a year after the announcement of the addition, 11 players have secured their spots as members of the first team in program history. On courts constructed in a few months’ time, the group has begun preparing for its inaugural season in the spring, when it will become the seventh Division III school to compete in the sport at the NCAA level.
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Lynchburg also joins a roster just over 100 deep of schools across all NCAA divisions to offer the sport.
“We’re not intimidated by it being a niche with D-III,” said athletic director Jon Waters, who explained that although the program saw its physical roots come to fruition last October, the sport has been on the school and his department’s radar “for many, many years.”
Beach volleyball, the AD added, came up as another avenue by which the university could grow about five years ago. In that time, the school has seen the start or rebirth of four other programs — men’s and women’s swimming, women’s golf and the National Collegiate Equestrian Association program — as well.
In October of last year, Waters and other Lynchburg officials decided the time was right to move forward with plans to birth beach volleyball. Unlike the other four programs, though, making a spot for practices and competition within this sport required on-campus renovations. By mid-September, players had two courts where they could begin practicing, and several additional truckloads of sand were brought in in the ensuing days to finish off the third court.
The playing surface replaces recreational tennis courts that had been on campus for decades. The old courts were not torn up, Waters explained, but rather built on top of, with a layer of stone added for drainage purposes before sand of Lynchburg’s choosing was poured on. The school aims to make additional upgrades to carve out space for spectators in the future.
Waters, Givens and her staff and Lynchburg athletes all have offered “hands-on investment” in the new program. Men’s teams at the school chipped in in the building phase, and every beach player offers sweat equity both in the form of daily court upkeep (like raking sand or clearing away leaves before practices) and by working to improve for an upcoming slate of 16 play dates in the spring.
All 11 players — who hail from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and California — have exhibited trust in the program’s coaches and athletic department at UL, Givens said, since they all committed to playing for the Hornets before the courts had even been finished, and without any record of success to look to.
“It’s always hard to pitch something that you can’t see with your own eyes,” Givens said, but added she saw her group quickly jump on board once practices began.
In addition to preparation as one unit, players also have been split up into smaller groups for additional practices, which offer a chance to be helped more personally by coaches, said Ali Simon, a transfer from Brevard (N.C.) and the program’s lone sophomore.
Simon, like a handful of her new teammates, doesn’t have a ton of experience on the sand. She and others spent chunks of their careers focusing on playing indoors.
Simon was a right-side hitter indoors, but on the sand — which is “a lot more fun to dive in” compared to diving on hardwoods, she said — she has to become a proficient server, passer, hitter, settler and blocker.
Jordan Palmer, who traded the West Coast for the East upon embarking on college, has a similar view.
“I like being able to play everything,” the 5-foot-4 freshman from Los Angeles said. “I always like hitting the best, and it’s hard to hit and block as a short player when everyone else is like 6-5.”
That’s why she hopes, once she and her teammates get to know each other better through the fall, she’s paired with someone whose height lends well to blocking.
By the spring, when Lynchburg is set to travel to Maryland, Georgia and Texas for competition, the team should have a firm grasp on which skill sets and personalities mesh best for the matches that feature only two players on each side of the net, exposing every strength and weakness.
Palmer and teammate Mady Shirey, a product of Appomattox County High, both said they’re excited about events in the coming months in which their team will play teams from multiple divisions.
“That’s kind of the beauty of it, and that’s something I think helped me sell [the program] to the girls is that they’re playing at the Division III level technically, but they’re also able to play D-Is and D-IIs,” Givens said. “... We’ll be playing high-level competition, but they’re also able to have the Division III lifestyle.”
For now, the goal is to have current players up their understanding of the game and, using their existing athleticism, increase their volleyball skills on the sand as they move toward official play a few months from now, Givens explained.
Each day of practice and weightlifting, and each event in the spring, provides an opportunity for improvement. “Just move together, because we are so new,” Simon said. “We just need to achieve small things and gradually work up.”